


Angelica and the Incredible Bra Thief

by Adaarling



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Family Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 23:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14436378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adaarling/pseuds/Adaarling
Summary: In which Eliza's acting strange, Peggy is a clothes thief, and Angelica is horrible at conclusions.





	Angelica and the Incredible Bra Thief

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday request prompt for someone on tumblr. Happy Birthday!

It’s not unusual for Angelica’s clothes to go missing. Between the clothes that disappear between washing machine and dryer transfers, Peggy who routinely sneaks into her drawers, and simply not keeping an organized room, it’s really par for the course. What’s different about this is that it’s only her bras.

“Peggy!” Angelica shouts into the hallway, “Have you been going through my stuff, again?”

Peggy pokes their head out of their bedroom. “No, I gave you back that shirt already.”

“It’s not a shirt I’m missing,” Angelica informs them.

“Well, I haven’t taken anything else,” Peggy says before closing their door.

Angelica feels like she should be more suspicious, but it’s just the old ones, anyways. Maybe the demonic dryer had finally ripped them in half and Ma just threw them away without telling her. She would ask Eliza, but she’s been acting really sulky lately, and anyways, Eliza has a different taste in clothes and doesn’t tend to go shopping from Angelica’s closet.  _ Weird, _ she thinks, and goes back to picking out an outfit for school.

\--

It passes from unusual to annoying when Angelica goes to pick out a bra for a weekend outing, only to find her drawers empty, forcing her to do some impromptu laundry. It goes from annoying to infuriating when an entire shopping bag of brand new bras goes missing the day after she buys them.

“Peggy, give me back my clothes!” Angelica shouts, storming into her sibling’s room and startling them out of their headphones.

“What?” they ask.

“I know you’re taking my bras,” Angelica says, starting to rummage through Peggy’s things. “Give them back!”

Peggy jumps up, blocking Angelica from their closet. “I told you I’m not taking your clothes!”

“Stop lying!” 

“I’m not!”

Angelica tries to move Peggy, but they grab her around the waist and refuse to let go. Somehow, they both end up on the ground, rolling around to get the upper hand. “Ma!”

“Girls!”

They both freeze as their dad appears in the doorway, an expression of weariness and exasperation on his face. “Your mom and Cathy are asleep and I finally have PJ calm enough to sit still. Why are you fighting?”

Peggy jumps up first. “Angelica’s trashing my room ‘cause she thinks I’m stealing her bras.”

“You  _ are _ stealing my bras!”

“Am not!”

“Hey!” Dad says, sharply, and both of them quiet, settling for glowering at each other, instead. “Margarita, have you been going through your sister’s stuff, again?”

“No, Daddy,” Peggy says.

“But Dad—!” Angelica starts.

“No ‘buts,’” Dad says, “If they said they didn’t do it, then they didn’t do it.”

Angelica scowls. “Fine,” she snaps and storms out of the room, directly into Eliza’s who jumps away from the wall as if she wasn’t just listening in on the fight. “Why does Dad always stick up for them?” she whines, plopping down onto Eliza’s bed.

Eliza’s stares, wide-eyed at her sister before gingerly patting her on the back. “I don’t know, maybe they didn’t do it,” she says, but her voice gets higher at the end like it’s a question.

Angelica groans into the sheets. “But who else could it be? It’s not like you care about my clothes.” She doesn’t see the way Eliza’s eyes turn away guiltily. “And bras don’t just get up and march away, not with how much money I’ve spent on them!”

Eliza chooses not to say anything, and Angelica turns her head to eye her suspiciously. “What’s wrong with you? You always have some mediator thing to say about how ‘You shouldn’t pick on them, Angelica,’ or ‘Maybe you should work together, Angelica.’ Why are you being so quiet?”

“No reason!” Eliza says, a tad bit too quickly.

Angelica stares her down for a bit longer before sighing. “You’re all acting weird,” she says, getting up from the bed. “I’m taking a nap. Maybe when I wake up, whatever ghost that’s haunting the house will have returned my bras.”

“Yeah,” Eliza laughs weakly. “Maybe.”

\--

It all comes to a head a week later. Angelica’s parents can’t explain what’s happening to her bras, but her ma offers to take her shopping again to replenish the sadly depleted belongings. Peggy hasn’t spoken to Angelica since their fight, and quite frankly, she’s fine with that. The only anomaly is Eliza, who’s made a business out of avoiding everyone in the house and staying in her room for long stretches of time when she’s not begging to stay over at her friend Joanne’s house. Normally, Angelica would have asked her about her strange behavior by now, but she’s been too annoyed at her own problems to want to press her sister. Besides, if Eliza wants to tell her something, she knows where to find her.

Angelica doesn’t know what wakes her up in the middle of the night, but when she goes to grab her water bottle off her nightstand, she realizes that it’s empty. With a groan, she climbs out of bed, intent on getting water from the closest source, which would be the bathroom sink in the hall. But when she walks towards it, she hears a strange shuffling, despite the light being off. Frowning, she slows her steps and listens closely, only to hear a familiar voice mumbling to itself. Opening the bathroom door all the way, Angelica pokes her head in.

“Eliza?”

Eliza freezes, hands flying behind her back. “Angelica?”

“Why are you in the dark?” Angelica asks, flicking the light on and catching her sister’s eyes—suspiciously wet and shiny—flash to the sink before looking at her with guilt. Angelica follows her gaze and sees the sink littered with bras. Old, worn bras, thick sports bras, frilly lace bras, and bras that still had the price tags from Macy’s. “Are those  _ my  _ bras?”

And Eliza bursts into tears.

Angelica takes a step back first in surprise, then horror, then moves to shout for their ma to maybe come help her because she  _ doesn’t know what’s going on _ …! “No, no!” Eliza cries out, “Don’t call Ma! I don’t want her to know…”

Wary now, Angelica shuts the bathroom door and moves closer to her sister, close enough to put an arm around her shoulder. Eliza doesn’t immediately accept the touch, but she doesn’t move away either, so Angelica takes that as progress. “Umm, so I guess I should apologize to Peggy?”

Eliza’s shoulders start to shake a tad bit harder, and Angelica panics, thinking that maybe she’s said the wrong thing until she hears Eliza give a wet chuckle. “If anyone owes them an apology, it’s me,” she says.

Angelica waits for Eliza to explain.

“Do you know William Johnson?” Eliza asks, seemingly out of the blue.

Angelica starts. Did she know someone by that name? “Is  he a… football player?” she guesses.

Eliza gives another wet laugh, stronger this time, and sniffs. “Close, we run track together, and he’s really good at it, and all the others girls think he’s really nice and he always helps me with my stretches when I need a partner…”

And as Eliza rambles on, a light blush blooming on her cheeks, Angelica comes to a realization. “You have a crush on him!”

“Shh,” Eliza says, looking around like at any minute, she expects one of their parents—or worse, a sleepy PJ—to wander into the bathroom. “I...maybe I… have a crush.”

“Aww, that’s so cute!” Angelica gushes, “My baby sister’s first crush! She’s growing up so fast!”

But instead of looking happy at the thought, Eliza begins to look unsettled. “But that’s the thing,” she says, quietly, “I don’t think he sees me as… growing.”

“Growing,” Angelica repeats, blankly.

Eliza nods and gestures to her chest, bra still clenched in one of her hands. “Growing.”

“Explain.”

“He came over to me at lunch a few weeks ago and started asking all these questions, like he wanted to know more about me, and then he…” Eliza hangs her head, “...asked me for my bra size…” Angelica feels the expression harden on her face, and Eliza must sense her budding anger because she hurries on to say, “It wasn’t too bad! But I don’t think I said the right thing, because then he went to sit with his friends and they started laughing and I just felt  _ awful _ —” She stopped and took a breath. “You and mom are always having ‘girl time’ while you shop and she always tells you things, and it made me realize that I feel left out sometimes, but I never realized  _ how much _ I was left out until William was laughing with his friends about something that I don’t know about. I mean, how can a boy know more about girl stuff than me, and I’m the one that’s supposed to know, as if I’m not a…”  _ Real girl _ remained unspoken, but the words still hung in the air. Angelica felt like a failure of a sister.

“Oh Eliza,” she whispers, pulling her sister into a real hug. “Of course you’re a real girl, and no stupid boy should ever make you feel like you aren’t. Or a stupid sister.”

“You’re not stupid—”

“But I made you feel like you weren’t, well,  _ you _ , even if I didn’t mean to,” Angelica explains, “I don’t even think mom realized that we hadn’t been including you, it’s just you never  _ have _ really liked the girly things that we’ve done. But that’s no excuse for not asking you, or making you feel like you aren’t really a girl because of it. That wasn’t fair to you.”

Eliza takes a deep, shuddering breath and exhales. “Thank you,” she says softly.

“We’re in this together, right? You, me, and sometimes Peggy, the Schuyler Sisters.”

“And Cathy,” Eliza smiles.

“And Cathy,” Angelica amends. “So… you were stealing my bras for revenge?”

Eliza snorts. “I was  _ borrowing them _ to find out my size. I told William that I was a medium,” she says, showing off the tag on the bra, “but that’s obviously not a real size.”

“How about this,” Angelica says, “We put all these bras back in my room, get some sleep, and in the morning, we can talk to ma about explaining the different bra sizes in different places. And on Saturday, ma can set us up to go to the bra place that she took me for my very first fitting.”

“Are you sure?” Eliza asks, shyly. “I mean, if I don’t have anything by now, I might not get any at all. It might just be a waste of money.”

“Ma told me on my first visit that she was a late bloomer, and she has the biggest boobs of all of her sisters at a respectable B-cup. You’ll be fine.”

Eliza smiles. “Thank you, Angelica.”

“No problem, sis. Now go get some sleep; I’ll clean up in here.”

Eliza nods and slips out the room. Angelica gathers up all the bras in the bathroom, making sure to account for the ones that are still missing, and heads to her room. She puts the stack on top of her dresser, delegating the task of sorting to the morning, and reaches for her phone, shooting off a quick text.

_ Hey Maria, I need a favor... _

\--

The next day, Eliza is back to her regular, cheerful self. At breakfast, she teases Peggy and helps feed Cathy for their mom and makes eye contact with Angelica, again. At school, she strides into the cafeteria proudly and doesn’t spare one glance for William Johnson and his friends when they start to laugh and whisper in her wake. Angelica’s proud of her little sister, but there’s still one more thing left for her to do.

She catches him in the hallway right as the warning bell rings. “William Johnson,” Angelica calls, “You have a moment?”

She’s not stupid; she knows exactly what to do to get a boy’s attention, and she planned her outfit of the day specifically for the occasion. So she has the satisfaction to watch Johnson’s eyes light up at the realization that  _ the  _ Angelica Schuyler was trying to get his attention. He shoos off his friends who leave with loud cat whistles and rowdy words of encouragement. When his friends are out of sight, Angelica pulls up a picture on her phone and watches in satisfaction as Johnson's face loses all color.

“Is that—”

“A dic pic, yes,” Angelica says with a vicious smile. “Your dic pic? Absolutely.” Then, she steps in real close, close enough that Johnson backs himself swiftly into a locker but not close enough that any other student spares them more than a passing glance. “I’m not known for being the nice Schuyler, Johnson, but if I ever catch wind that you or  _ any _ of your little groupies are harassing my sister after today, you’ll find out exactly how  _ mean _ I can be.” She taps her phone, “Starting with a message to your mother about exactly who you send these kind of pictures to. Understood?”

Johnson nods his head frantically.

“What was that?” Angelica asks.

“Yes, ma’am!”

The final bell rings, but Johnson doesn’t move until Angelica motions him away with a wave of her hand. He scurries down the hall as quickly as possible, not once looking back, and Angelica smiles. She’s definitely getting a detention for being late, but at least it wasn’t another fight. She’ll have to thank Maria for getting that picture for her on such short notice, somehow.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was unbeta'd, so sorry for any mistakes or inconsistencies that I've missed.


End file.
